Viktor Kožený

Viktor Kožený (born June 28, 1963 in Prague) is a Czech-born and Harvard-educated financier, scientist and schollar who emigrated in 1980 with his mother and stepfather first to Munich, at that time West Germany and in 1982 alone to New Mexico, USA. From the summer of 1982 Mr. Kozeny lived and studied in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he stayed until 1989. In 1989 Mr. Kozeny lived in London and in early 1990 he returned back to Czechoslovakia after ten year long exile. Mr Kozeny is considered as the father of Voucher privatization proces in the former Czechoslovakia and is widely credited with saving the entire Czechoslovak program and making it into a model that brought a free market economy to over three hundred million people in Eastern Europe and former USSR. Due to political pressure Mr. Kozeny emigrated for the second time in 1994 first to Switzerland and later of the same year to the Bahamas. In 1995 Viktor Kozeny became a Irish citizen who is residing since 1994 in self imposed exile in Lyford Cay the Bahamas.

Education and public service

In 1981 Viktor Kozeny briefly attended as visiting schollar for mathematics and physics the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and ocassional lectures at the Max Plank Institute in Garching. After his departure to the USA he was briefly conducting physics research at the University of New Mexico in Albaquerque, New Mexico associated with the Sandia National Laboratories. From 1982 Mr. Kozeny attennded Harvard University until his graduation in 1989. During his studies at Harvard University Mr. Kozeny took largely highly advanced postgraduate classes in economics and other fields and also attended numerous lectures and courses at the Harvard Law School with focus on corporate law and international law, Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management with focus on corporate strategy and financial engineering. After the Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia Mr. Kozeny returned in early 1990 and subsequently served in 1990 as an advisor at the Czechoslovak Ministry of Finance and from 1991 untill 1993 as an advisor to the Czechoslovak Ministry of Interior. Mr. Kozeny also served as a member of Legislative Board of Czechoslovak government from 1991 until 1992. From 1997 Mr. Kozeny served in the diplomatic corps first as a Honorary Consul of Grenada to the Bahamas and from 1998 until 2003 as an Ambassador for Grenada. Mr. Kozeny had spoken at about 50 international conferences including the World Economic Forum in Davos, the annual meetings of the World Bank, IMF, EBRD and numerous CEO's conferences all around the world. Mr. Kozeny is fluent in English, Czech, German, Russian and has passive knowledge of some French and several other languages. Viktor Kozeny spent half of his life in Europe and the other half in America but he had widely travelled around the world and had spend an extensive time in Brazil, Russia and China while visiting close to 100 countries arround the world.

Politics

Viktor Kozeny had been historically ideologically aligned with most of the views of ODS and believes in free market economy with strong emphasis on education, research, creation of high value added industries and jobs and healthcare and safetynet in particullar for the elderly. Mr. Kozeny is however a strong supporter of unified Europe and believes in the need for European Constitution and considers global warming and transborder pollution a serious problem. Mr. Kozeny is extreemly well read in political theory which he also studied the Harvard University and likes to quote Montesquieu and John Locke. Unlike many politicians in the world Kozeny firmly beleves in natural inalienable rights of men which not even democratically elected assembly can take away nor men can give up. This is in sharp contrast to those politicians who believe in certain human rights but see these as derived from the State. In 2004 Kozeny founded a Czech political party called Viktor Kožený - Občanská federální demokracie to run in a direct election for a seat in the European Parliament. However as the Czech govermenent led by CSSD refused to grant him visa to return to the Czech Republic on the basis that he would endanger social order and cause public disturbance he was forced to abandon his political campaign. In the Czech Republic Viktor Kozeny had been continuously since 1992 a prominent target of numerous political campaigns against free market reform which included verbal threats of imprisonment to Mr. Kozeny by CSSD politicians and repeated display of Mr. Kozeny's picture with other Czech politicians at negative national billboard campaigns of the CSSD.

Litigation

In addition to his Czech warrant, Koženy faces a serious legal action by famed Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, who has filed an indictment in New York.

From October 5 2005, Kožený was in prison in Bahamas waiting for the court decision whether he will be handed over to the U.S. or to the Czech Republic. The current decision of the Bahamas Magistarte court from June 23, 2006, is that he will be transferred to the USA however since then all but three charges had been declared by the US District Court in SDNY to be time barred. On April 28 2007, he was set free on caution in the Bahamas after paying a $300,000 bail.

References

Telegraph of London article